Armadale, by Wilkie Collins

Chapter VI.

Pedgift’s Postscript.

“I mentioned that a point had occurred to me, sir,” remarked Pedgift Senior.

“You did,” said Allan.

“Would you like to hear what it is, Mr. Armadale?”

“If you please,” said Allan.

“With all my heart, sir! This is the point. I attach considerable importance — if nothing else can be done — to
having Miss Gwilt privately looked after, as long as she stops at Thorpe Ambrose. It struck me just now at the door,
Mr. Armadale, that what you are not willing to do for your own security, you might be willing to do for the security of
another person.”

“What other person?” inquired Allan.

“A young lady who is a near neighbor of yours, sir. Shall I mention the name in confidence? Miss Milroy.”

Allan started, and changed color.

“Miss Milroy!” he repeated. “Can she be concerned in this miserable business? I hope not, Mr. Pedgift; I
sincerely hope not.”

“I paid a visit, in your interests, sir, at the cottage this morning,” proceeded Pedgift Senior. “You shall hear
what happened there, and judge for yourself. Major Milroy has been expressing his opinion of you pretty freely; and I
thought it highly desirable to give him a caution. It’s always the way with those quiet addle-headed men: when they do
once wake up, there’s no reasoning with their obstinacy, and no quieting their violence. Well, sir, this morning I went
to the cottage. The major and Miss Neelie were both in the parlor — miss not looking so pretty as usual; pale, I
thought, pale, and worn, and anxious. Up jumps the addle-headed major (I wouldn’t give that, Mr. Armadale, for
the brains of a man who can occupy himself for half his lifetime n making a clock!)— up jumps the addle-headed major,
in the loftiest manner, and actually tries to look me down. Ha! ha! the idea of anybody looking me down, at my
time of life. I behaved like a Christian; I nodded kindly to old What’s-o’clock ‘Fine morning, major,’ says I. ‘Have
you any business with me?’ says he. ‘Just a word,’ says I. Miss Neelie, like the sensible girl she is, gets up to leave
the room; and what does her ridiculous father do? He stops her. ‘You needn’t go, my dear, I have nothing to say to Mr.
Pedgift,’ says this old military idiot, and turns my way, and tries to look me down again. ‘You are Mr. Armadale’s
lawyer,’ says he; ‘if you come on any business relating to Mr. Armadale, I refer you to my solicitor.’ (His solicitor
is Darch; and Darch has had enough of me in business, I can tell you!) ‘My errand here, major, does certainly
relate to Mr. Armadale,’ says I; ‘but it doesn’t concern your lawyer — at any rate, just yet. I wish to caution you to
suspend your opinion of my client, or, if you won’t do that, to be careful how you express it in public. I warn you
that our turn is to come, and that you are not at the end yet of this scandal about Miss Gwilt.’ It struck me as likely
that he would lose his temper when he found himself tackled in that way, and he amply fulfilled my expectations. He was
quite violent in his language — the poor weak creature — actually violent with me! I behaved like a Christian
again; I nodded kindly, and wished him good-morning. When I looked round to wish Miss Neelie good-morning, too, she was
gone. You seem restless, Mr. Armadale,” remarked Pedgift Senior, as Allan, feeling the sting of old recollections,
suddenly started out of his chair, and began pacing up and down the room. “I won’t try your patience much longer, sir;
I am coming to the point.”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Pedgift,” said Allan, returning to his seat, and trying to look composedly at the lawyer
through the intervening image of Neelie which the lawyer had called up.

“Well, sir, I left the cottage,” resumed Pedgift Senior. “Just as I turned the corner from the garden into the park,
whom should I stumble on but Miss Neelie herself, evidently on the lookout for me. ‘I want to speak to you for one
moment, Mr. Pedgift!’ says she. ‘Does Mr. Armadale think me mixed up in this matter?’ She was violently
agitated — tears in her eyes, sir, of the sort which my legal experience has not accustomed me to see. I quite
forgot myself; I actually gave her my arm, and led her away gently among the trees. (A nice position to find me in, if
any of the scandal-mongers of the town had happened to be walking in that direction!) ‘My dear Miss Milroy,’ says I,
‘why should Mr. Armadale think you mixed up in it?’ ”

“You ought to have told her at once that I thought nothing of the kind!” exclaimed Allan, indignantly. “Why did you
leave her a moment in doubt about it?”

“Because I am a lawyer, Mr. Armadale,” rejoined Pedgift Senior, dryly. “Even in moments of sentiment, under
convenient trees, with a pretty girl on my arm, I can’t entirely divest myself of my professional caution. Don’t look
distressed, sir, pray! I set things right in due course of time. Before I left Miss Milroy, I told her, in the plainest
terms, no such idea had ever entered your head.”

“Did she seem relieved?” asked Allan.

“She was able to dispense with the use of my arm, sir,” replied old Pedgift, as dryly as ever, “and to pledge me to
inviolable secrecy on the subject of our interview. She was particularly desirous that you should hear nothing
about it. If you are at all anxious on your side to know why I am now betraying her confidence, I beg to inform you
that her confidence related to no less a person than the lady who favored you with a call just now — Miss Gwilt.”

Allan, who had been once more restlessly pacing the room, stopped, and returned to his chair.

“Is this serious?” he asked.

“Most serious, sir,” returned Pedgift Senior. “I am betraying Miss Neelie’s secret, in Miss Neelie’s own interest.
Let us go back to that cautious question I put to her. She found some little difficulty in answering it, for the reply
involved her in a narrative of the parting interview between her governess and herself. This is the substance of it.
The two were alone when Miss Gwilt took leave of her pupil; and the words she used (as reported to me by Miss Neelie)
were these. She said, ‘Your mother has declined to allow me to take leave of her. Do you decline too?’ Miss Neelie’s
answer was a remarkably sensible one for a girl of her age. ‘We have not been good friends,’ she said, ‘and I believe
we are equally glad to part with each other. But I have no wish to decline taking leave of you.’ Saying that, she held
out her hand. Miss Gwilt stood looking at her steadily, without taking it, and addressed her in these words: ‘You
are not Mrs. Armadale yet.’ Gently, sir! Keep your temper. It’s not at all wonderful that a woman, conscious of
having her own mercenary designs on you, should attribute similar designs to a young lady who happens to be your near
neighbor. Let me go on. Miss Neelie, by her own confession (and quite naturally, I think), was excessively indignant.
She owns to having answered, ‘You shameless creature, how dare you say that to me!’ Miss Gwilt’s rejoinder was rather a
remarkable one — the anger, on her side, appears to have been of the cool, still, venomous kind. ‘Nobody ever yet
injured me, Miss Milroy,’ she said, ‘without sooner or later bitterly repenting it. You will bitterly repent
it.’ She stood looking at her pupil for a moment in dead silence, and then left the room. Miss Neelie appears to have
felt the imputation fastened on her, in connection with you, far more sensitively than she felt the threat. She had
previously known, as everybody had known in the house, that some unacknowledged proceedings of yours in London had led
to Miss Gwilt’s voluntary withdrawal from her situation. And she now inferred, from the language addressed to her, that
she was actually believed by Miss Gwilt to have set those proceedings on foot, to advance herself, and to injure her
governess, in your estimation. Gently, sir, gently! I haven’t quite done yet. As soon as Miss Neelie had recovered
herself, she went upstairs to speak to Mrs. Milroy. Miss Gwilt’s abominable imputation had taken her by surprise; and
she went to her mother first for enlightenment and advice. She got neither the one nor the other. Mrs. Milroy declared
she was too ill to enter on the subject, and she has remained too ill to enter on it ever since. Miss Neelie applied
next to her father. The major stopped her the moment your name passed her lips: he declared he would never hear you
mentioned again by any member of his family. She has been left in the dark from that time to this, not knowing how she
might have been misrepresented by Miss Gwilt, or what falsehoods you might have been led to believe of her. At my age
and in my profession, I don’t profess to have any extraordinary softness of heart. But I do think, Mr. Armadale, that
Miss Neelie’s position deserves our sympathy.”

“I’ll do anything to help her!” cried Allan, impulsively. “You don’t know, Mr. Pedgift, what reason I have —” He
checked himself, and confusedly repeated his first words. “I’ll do anything,” he reiterated earnestly —“anything in the
world to help her!”

“Do you really mean that, Mr. Armadale? Excuse my asking; but you can very materially help Miss Neelie, if you
choose!”

“How?” asked Allan. “Only tell me how!”

“By giving me your authority, sir, to protect her from Miss Gwilt.”

Having fired that shot pointblank at his client, the wise lawyer waited a little to let it take its effect before he
said any more.

Allan’s face clouded, and he shifted uneasily from side to side of his chair.

“Your son is hard enough to deal with, Mr. Pedgift,” he said, “and you are harder than your son.”

“Thank you, sir,” rejoined the ready Pedgift, “in my son’s name and my own, for a handsome compliment to the firm.
If you really wish to be of assistance to Miss Neelie,” he went on, more seriously, “I have shown you the way. You can
do nothing to quiet her anxiety which I have not done already. As soon as I had assured her that no misconception of
her conduct existed in your mind, she went away satisfied. Her governess’s parting threat doesn’t seem to have dwelt on
her memory. I can tell you, Mr. Armadale, it dwells on mine! You know my opinion of Miss Gwilt; and you know what Miss
Gwilt herself has done this very evening to justify that opinion even in your eyes. May I ask, after all that has
passed, whether you think she is the sort of woman who can be trusted to confine herself to empty threats?”

The question was a formidable one to answer. Forced steadily back from the position which he had occupied at the
outset of the interview, by the irresistible pressure of plain facts, Allan began for the first time to show symptoms
of yielding on the subject of Miss Gwilt. “Is there no other way of protecting Miss Milroy but the way you have
mentioned?” he asked, uneasily.

“Do you think the major would listen to you, sir, if you spoke to him?” asked Pedgift Senior, sarcastically. “I’m
rather afraid he wouldn’t honor me with his attention. Or perhaps you would prefer alarming Miss Neelie by
telling her in plain words that we both think her in danger? Or, suppose you send me to Miss Gwilt, with instructions
to inform her that she has done her pupil a cruel injustice? Women are so proverbially ready to listen to reason; and
they are so universally disposed to alter their opinions of each other on application — especially when one woman
thinks that another woman has destroyed her prospect of making a good marriage. Don’t mind me, Mr. Armadale;
I’m only a lawyer, and I can sit waterproof under another shower of Miss Gwilt’s tears!”

“In plain words, Mr. Armadale, I want to keep Miss Gwilt’s proceedings privately under view, as long as she stops in
this neighborhood. I answer for finding a person who will look after her delicately and discreetly. And I agree to
discontinue even this harmless superintendence of her actions, if there isn’t good reasons shown for continuing it, to
your entire satisfaction, in a week’s time. I make that moderate proposal, sir, in what I sincerely believe to be Miss
Milroy’s interest, and I wait your answer, Yes or No.”

“Can’t I have time to consider?” asked Allan, driven to the last helpless expedient of taking refuge in delay.

“Certainly, Mr. Armadale. But don’t forget, while you are considering, that Miss Milroy is in the habit of walking
out alone in your park, innocent of all apprehension of danger, and that Miss Gwilt is perfectly free to take any
advantage of that circumstance that Miss Gwilt pleases.”

Popular prejudice may deny it, but the profession of the law is a practically Christian profession in one respect at
least. Of all the large collection of ready answers lying in wait for mankind on a lawyer’s lips, none is kept in
better working order than “the soft answer which turneth away wrath.” Pedgift Senior rose with the alacrity of youth in
his legs, and the wise moderation of age on his tongue. “Many thanks, sir,” he said, “for the attention you have
bestowed on me. I congratulate you on your decision, and I wish you good-evening.” This time his indicative snuff-box
was not in his hand when he opened the door, and he actually disappeared without coming back for a second
postscript.

Allan’s head sank on his breast when he was left alone. “If it was only the end of the week!” he thought, longingly.
“If I only had Midwinter back again!”

As that aspiration escaped the client’s lips, the lawyer got gayly into his gig. “Hie away, old girl!” cried Pedgift
Senior, patting the fast-trotting mare with the end of his whip. “I never keep a lady waiting — and I’ve got business
to-night with one of your own sex!”